


For Eternity

by raspberrylimonade



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Fall Maiko Week 2020, Introspection, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Canon, Romance, kind of a series of vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:02:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27260914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberrylimonade/pseuds/raspberrylimonade
Summary: But no matter how far / away you may be / I'll just close my eyes / and you're in my dreams / And there you will be / until we will meetBeing Fire Lord means constantly spending time away from his girlfriend. Or, Zuko, Mai, and the departures and reunions between them.
Relationships: Mai/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 64





	For Eternity

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration for this piece comes from 'Queen of My Heart' by Westlife.
> 
> _I'll always look back as I walk away  
>  This memory will last for eternity  
> And all of our tears will be lost in the rain  
> When I found my way back to your arms again  
> But until that day, you know you are  
> The queen of my heart _
> 
> For Maiko Week 2020, 'Reunion'

He tries to include her on diplomatic missions as much as he can, when they start dating again. He knows she enjoys travel - it’s a detour from the monotony of everyday life and political navigation.

It’s not always possible, however. Traditionally, there is no reason for the Fire Lord to bring along anyone without an official title on such missions.

Azula got to bring Mai and Ty Lee everywhere during the war. How was this any different?

Of course, he could declare her the royal consort. It wouldn’t get her onto all his trips, but it would give them far more leeway and get rid of a lot of red tape. Something about the title rubs him the wrong way, however. It sounds like he is having an illicit affair.

(“I think you are confusing it with ‘courtesan’,” his uncle told him. Not that it made Zuko any less uneasy.)

(He could also just ask her to marry him, which would do the exact same thing. The idea makes his knees go weak and his stomach twist in knots. In a good way, mostly. He wants to marry Mai. She’s the only person he’s ever thought of that way. But he doesn’t want to rush her into anything.)

Sometimes he recalls his last day in Ba Sing Se, during the war, and how close he was to watching her board that ship without him. Now she has watched him sail away multiple times, unable to follow.

He always stood on the deck and stared at her as the land got farther and farther and she appeared to be drifting away from him, watching her figure get smaller and smaller until she was beyond a speck on the horizon.

There were times when they said farewell at the palace or her house, and he would turn back as he walked away. He always looked back.

In the early days of their rekindled friendship, he almost didn’t ask her to start a romantic relationship again. Her mother had moved off the main island a few months after her father’s incarceration, and Mai was travelling back and forth to see her brother. He didn’t want to drag her family into politics again, not when they had finally settled into their new lives.

There never was anyone else for him, though.

Mai watches him leave time and again, accepts it as a part of dating the Fire Lord, and goes on with her life - helping with her aunt’s shop, reading minor reports, and training with Ty Lee. With that in mind, Zuko is disappointed at how easily he falls apart the one time she leaves for more than a week.

He becomes irritable at first. Falling asleep is difficult, and his tiredness only leads to impatience and frustration. He snaps and yells, and his advisors whisper about how the Fire Lord has been more hot headed recently. Then he realises he’s been reacting poorly, gets more frustrated with himself, and becomes more irritable as a result. Finally, he starts downing tea in the hopes that it will keep him calm. It works, but only a little.

He throws a scroll at the wall, mad at his own lack of focus. Someone whispers outside his study doors, followed by Ty Lee’s unmistakable voice.

“He’s just moody because he misses Mai.”

He lets his head drop, forehead hitting the table top. Yes, he misses Mai. He misses how she would come in and tell him to rest. He misses having lunch with her to look forward to. He misses the knowledge that he’d get to curl up with her at the end of a long day.

Mai is his raft in the middle of a sea. When the tumultuous waves of politics threaten to crash down over him, the thought of her gives him a lifeline, gives him calm.

It’s always better when she is actually there, though.

About a year after they got back together, she confessed to him about the painting. The one she kept even when they were apart, when she was with another man.

He remembered when they had it made. It was shortly after the war, during their honeymoon period thinking that life would be happily ever after just because they didn’t have to take sides in a global conflict. They were visiting the fire festival street fair near Mai’s home village and decided to humour a young artist doing postcard-sized portraits for revelers and animals. It had been a casual afternoon. Zuko had taken time off royal duties. Dressed in his regular clothes, with hair hanging in his face, most people did not recognise their Fire Lord unless they saw his face up close.

The painting was candid. They were both smiling, leaning comfortably on one another, the light washes of colour conveying a lightness that captured how they felt that day - light and easy, as if all was right in the world. It was a stark contrast to their first portrait together, stiff and formal and black.

_It hurt, walking away. Being apart. Looking at this, remembering what we had, it made me forget the pain, if only for a while._

_Why did you hold on?_

_I guess I never could give up on you._

He turns his head, eyeing the volcanic rock that now sits by his bedside, the one he’d kept tucked away in a chest those years at sea, and muses about how they are alike in small ways.

The debriefs right after disembarking are the _worst_. They aren’t always necessary, and his advisors soon learn to avoid them as much as possible. Especially when the Lady Mai is not at the palace to receive him.

Zuko is absolutely useless in those meetings. Restless and itching to just seek out his girlfriend, he stumbles through his speeches and never answers questions straight.

He soon learnt to draft a report during the journey back. It isn’t easy, with thoughts of reuniting with Mai to distract him, but it takes the weight of diplomatic affairs off his mind when he finally sweeps her into his arms, allowing him to _be_ with her.

He always makes a beeline for Mai upon return. His return from Yu Dao - now Republic City - still haunts him, that she had to seek him out, the way she found him stewing, the coldness she radiated, their unpleasant fallout. That is the past now, a block on the long and winding road that brought them together, then apart, then ultimately back to each other. He is determined never to repeat that again.

And so, ministers, officials, and all palace staff in between are brushed aside. He has a singular mission to reunite with his woman, and more than ever, he would see this one through. Suki was not impressed the one time he cut through a training formation just to reach Mai on the other side of the courtyard. (She was one to talk. At least he didn’t squeal the way Sokka did whenever he visited.) The other warriors giggled behind his back.

There’s something about the way she looks at him when he strides into the room. Whatever image he has burned into his memory of her, that he has held on to while apart, cannot compare to the coals burning in her eyes when they first meet his again.

His warm hands rest on either side of her ribs, pulling her into him.

_I’ve missed you._

The first time he said those words to her, she had been hoping not to hear them.

_Ugh, why did you have to say that?_

They weren’t ready for each other back then. They both still had growing to do.

Now she obliges him, leaning against the silk of his royal robes.

_I missed you too._

They rarely kiss then, or if they do, it is brief and chaste. For one, they aren’t that cliche. Furthermore, their initial reunions are semi-private at best. Even in the quiet hallways of the palace, one never knows when a gossipping servant (or Avatar) would see them (Aang once caught them, and later babbled Zuko’s ear off about how he ‘did not think either of them were that mushy,’ at which Zuko yelled “We aren’t mushy!” and later had an identity crisis over whether he was actually a hopeless romantic.)

Mai will, however, peck his jaw or cheek before parting from his embrace. Especially if she’s leading him to a prepared meal. Goodness knows if he actually remembers to feed himself on these work trips without anyone to check in on him.

The first time she returned to him, that morning right after the war, that moment will stay with him forever. The way the light came through the large windows, the way the pain of his injury dissipated the moment he became aware of her presence, the rose tint of her cheeks as she told him she ‘actually kind of liked’ him, he cherished every little detail about it.

If Mai not hating him had given him a tingling warmth, her kind-of-liking him had turned him into mush right there and then.

Eighteen days. The longest time they have spent apart from one another during their courtship.

When Mai finally returns from vacation with her family, it doesn’t take long for Zuko to drag her into the nearest enclosed hallway of the palace and kiss her senseless.

_I’ve missed you._

It’s late in the morning. The hallways are bright and empty. It’s the day after the capital’s summer celebration and he has given most of the palace staff the day off (as reward for their hard work in the preparations, but more importantly, so he and Mai can enjoy some peace and quiet. Win-win.)

In his eyes, Mai’s fair skin glows in the sunlight as she smiles up at him bashfully, not expecting such a show of affection.

_It’s only been two weeks._

_Eighteen days._

_Didn’t you get my letter?_

_It’s not the same._

What he really means is that he felt lost without her around, that he can’t live without her, that being apart for so long was such torture to his soul that he doesn’t want to spend another day of his life away from her (and heavens, it is taking all his self control and then some not to ask her to marry him, if only because Mai deserves a well thought-out proposal and not an impulsive act in some corner of the palace, but the old Fire Lady headpiece is hidden in his chambers and _spirits -_ )

He gazes intensely into her eyes, trying to convey all the emotions he built up in their eighteen days apart. 

So instead she gazes back at him, their irises burning with all the emotions they couldn’t share while apart. Zuko winds his arm around her, and this time it is he who gets to lead her to the lunch he set up for them.


End file.
